Guest Demonstration by Amy Johnson October 20, 2006 at Andrighetti Glassworks, Vancouver BC

Amy Johnson received a Diploma in Applied Arts from Sheridan College in 2001, majoring in Glass Blowing . She was drawn to glass years before through her obsession for collecting beads. Sheridan focused on blown glass, kiln casting, sand casting, and engraving. During this time, she also worked independently to continue to hone her flame working skills. Amy and her blowing partner Kate Dunlop did some experimental pieces combining blown and flame worked components together hot. Today Amy has been flame working for 9 years, now working full time supporting herself with her jewelry and through teaching classes. She also runs TANK fire + metal, a shared retail and teaching studio in the newly re-developed historic distillery district of Toronto. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, the USA, and in the UK and she has been published in various books and magazines as well as winning awards for her jewelry. Recently you can see her work in the new lark book called “The Complete Book of Glass Bead making” by Kimberly Adams. Amy has a strong sense of color and loves to use it expressively in her work. Inspired by the interactions between color, form and pattern, she likes to create vibrant and unusual designs with the glass. The tactile nature of glass is also an extremely important quality and Amy enjoys the small scale of the objects she creates. The small size usually allows you to hold the objects, engaging your touch as well as drawing you in visually. http://ehmeglass.com/

	Amy brought some of her creations and we had to try on her rings. Some of us had to take them home with us.
	Amy's first demo is a skull & crossbone ring. She lays down several wraps of glass on a ring mandrel and then gets all of the glass evenly heated. She wants to flatten it into the base of the ring all at once in order to get an even thickness and width. She checks it carefully to see if the thickness is even and adds a bit of glass here and there. When she is satisfied with the shape of the ring, she adds a large gather of glass to what will be the top of the ring to form the skull. Then come the eye sockets, made by pressing the handle end of her paddle into the glass. The bones are added with stacked dots, and she is very careful not to overheat them at this point. She makes the teeth with a knife.
Amy's second demo was one of her "big explody beads", resembling a sea anemone or ? Although she used to wind her glass onto the mandrel, she now favours the "large gather" method as more efficient. As she is applying the large drooping dots for the arms, she holds the hot bit so that it droops down and blows to set it quickly in the shape she wants.
After adding all the arms, and two colours to the tops of the arms, she flattens the top of each. Then she takes her pick and makes a depression in the top. Some of them she bends a little for attitude. When she want to bend one, she directs the heat to the bottom of the arm so that it bends from where it attaches to the main body. Much of what Amy does with her sculptural forms requires careful direction of the flame to selectively heat an area.
	Amy's next demo incorporates an embossed copper sheet into the bead.
	She cuts a circle out of tooling copper, lays it on some soft material and draws on it with her tungsten pick, creating an embossed design. Then she gets large gather of glass, in this case lavender opaque, and attaches it to a punty. She uses steel chopsticks for the punty. They are hollow, so you have to be careful that you don't direct the flame on the punty or you will burn a hole in it. She gets it very hot and lets gravity pool it onto a graphite pad to flatten it. She is trying not to drive the punty into the center of the disc.
She then uses mashers to flatten the edges of the disc and marvers the edge. She gets the flat top of the disc quite hot, while at the same time warming up the copper disc. The copper must be warm, but too much heat will burn up the copper or blacken it. Then ever so carefully, the copper is slid onto the heated glass. If the glass isn't hot enough, it won't stick.
	The copper is attached and now she heats up a large gather of transparent color to cover it. She has two rods of color taped together so that she can melt a larger gather. She must keep the disk warm, but keep the copper out of the flame.   The large gather is dropped onto the disc. It is heated up and the edges folded over. When she is heating it, she is melting the edges only, so that she doesn't get the back hot enough to droop down the punty. When the transparent lavender is all melted out over the front and sides of the disc, she applies a series of darker dots around the edges, leaving a small gap.
She attaches a clear rod as a punty on the front of the disc, and removes the chopstick from the back. Then she handed it to Joanne to keep warm while she made a barrel bead.   She warms up the edge of the disc where she left the gap and attaches the barrel bead to make a pendant. She said that if she was working alone, she would make the barrel bead first and have it waiting in the kiln.
	After burning off the clear punty, voila!
Everyone present enjoyed watching Amy work, and we all took away something from the demonstration. I know a few couldn't wait to get home and light their torch.   Thanks, Amy.